The Scottish Conservatives have won a Westminster by-election for the first time in more than 50 years, taking Aberdeen South from the SNP in a result that party leader Kemi Badenoch called “significant” and a message about the future of oil and gas.
The seat, vacated by the SNP’s Stephen Flynn after he was elected to Holyrood, was won by Tory MSP Douglas Lumsden — a former oil and gas worker who now must resign from the Scottish Parliament just six weeks after winning re-election as a North East MSP, due to a Holyrood ban on so-called dual mandates.
“Scottish Conservatives win first Westminster by-election in 50 years, taking Aberdeen South from SNP.”
Lumsden defeated SNP candidate Richard Thomson, a former MP for Gordon, by a margin of more than 6,000 votes, with the Tories taking almost half of all ballots cast. “The destruction of the oil and gas industry must stop now,” he said, describing the result as a message from constituents.
Aberdeen is at the heart of the UK’s energy future, and the UK government has chosen the city as the home of GB Energy, its fledgling publicly-owned energy company. Badenoch promised she would “never stop fighting” for the constituency, noting support from those who had “never voted Conservative before”. “Makerfield was about one man’s job. Aberdeen South was about thousands of jobs in oil and gas across our country and the future of an entire city,” she said.
But Amy Cameron, from Greenpeace UK, warned that “false promises” from the Tories would not deliver a prosperous economic future. “A just transition has to be strong enough for people to let go of the industry that built their community and trust that the new economy will be ready to catch them,” she said.
Shortly after the Tory victory, the SNP claimed a win of its own in the Arbroath and Broughty Ferry by-election, where Lara Bird — a qualified lawyer who has worked as an SNP researcher and adviser at Westminster — held the seat for the party with a majority of more than 5,000 votes over the Conservatives.
Both Scottish by-elections were triggered when sitting MPs — Flynn and his SNP colleague Stephen Gethins — resigned from the House of Commons after being elected to Holyrood. South of the border, Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham won the Makerfield by-election, paving the way for him to challenge Sir Keir Starmer as Labour Party leader.
The Tory victory in Aberdeen South ends a half-century drought and hands the party a symbolic win in a city where the debate over the UK’s energy transition is most acute.